In the words of Catharine MacKinnon, "a woman is not yet a name for a way of being human." In other words, women are still excluded, as authors and agents, from identifying what it is to be human and what therefore violates the dignity and integrity of humans. Recognition, Responsibility, and Rights is written in response to that failure. This collection of essays by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral landscape by developing theory that acknowledges the diversity of women.

This book is the first volume in a new series of edited collections showcasing the best new work in feminist theory that has emerged from the group Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST). FEAST advances the goal of a feminist ethico-politics by creating an organization and a body of work in which feminist ethicists and feminist social theorists join forces to produce a politically effective feminist ethics. In this first volume, essayists address that goal by analyzing gender with respect to three key ethical concepts: recognition, responsibility, and rights.« lessmore »

Robin N. Fiore is assistant professor of philosophy at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida and is associate faculty in the Comparative Studies Ph.D. Program for Public Intellectuals and in Women Studies. Hilde Lindemann Nelson is associate professor in the Philosophy Department at Michigan State University.

Part 1 Part I: RecognitionChapter 2 Lived Body vs. Gender: Reflections on Social Structures and SubjectivityChapter 3 Gender and WorkChapter 4 The Role of Recognition in the Formation of Self-understandingChapter 5 Can There Be a Queer Politics of Recognition?Chapter 6 Anorexia Nervosa and Our Unreasonable PerceptionsPart 7 Part II: ResponsibilityChapter 8 The Impurities of Epistemic Responsibility: Developing a Practice Oriented EpistemologyChapter 9 The Sick and the Queer: Memoir and the Uses of Oppositional SubjectivityChapter 10 Integrity and VulnerabilityChapter 11 Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: Weighing Feminist ConcernsChapter 12 Talking Back to Feminist Postmodernism: Toward a New Radical Feminist Interpretation of the BodyPart 13 Part III: RightsChapter 14 Truth and Voice in Women's RightsChapter 15 Globalizing Women's Rights: Building a Public SphereChapter 16 Vulnerable Women and Neo-Liberal Globalization: Debt Burdens Undermine Women's Health in the Global South

Recognition, Responsibility, and Rights is an important collection of essays carrying forward the reconceptualizations of body, gender, human rights, globalization, and much else that feminist analyses have initiated. Many of the contributors are among the best doing this work.— Virginia Held, City University of New York

This collection is welcome. It offers an update on old chestnuts (e.g., subjectivity/politics), several vignettes of powerful feminist concepts being productively applied (e.g., relational autonomy), and a glimpse of exciting new feminist explorations (e.g., voice and global positioning). Like all good feminist philosophy, it offers a rich dialectic of conceptual revision and attention to particularity. And it demonstrates feminism's resilience and honest self-scrutiny. A great group of essays on current developments in feminist theory, politics, and ethics.— Philosophy in Review

In addition to the considerable virtues of the individual essays, the volume as a whole is a demonstration and celebration of the maturity of feminist ethics, as shown both in the engagement of newer scholars in the field with the work of more established colleagues (many of whom are also represented here), and in the diverse engagements between theory and practice that help to move feminist ethics from the critical margins to the center.— Naomi Scheman, professor of philosophy and women's studies, University of Minnesota